Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/272

 Lonely reached languidly for his kite-string, and began slowly to haul in, squinting absently up at the dot of white that grew bigger and bigger in the tremulous blue above. Then, in the puzzled silence that followed on the end of his narrative, the quite forgotten old town constable was heard suddenly to slap his leg and to declare with much zest that that was the beatenest thing he had ever heard on!

In fact, while Lonely went on to recount how he had caught a certain mad dog in a lap-robe, and thereby saved many children from impending death, the rotund and credulous town constable sat down between old Cap'n Steiner and Cap'n Sands, and gave the two aged skippers the story over again, as best he could, and again slapped his leg and declared it to be the beatenest thing he had ever heard on!

But why, alas, go on with the sad fabrications of this conscienceless Lonely O'Malley? They are of moment, it must be confessed, only as they stand an evidence of that youthful and exuberant activity of imagination which in maturer years was to exert such a marked influence over our Lonely and his career. That